Category Archives: INfrastructure Fundamentals

As the calendar transitions out of August into September, the school year begins, the hot summer turns to a brisk fall, and we notice the days begin to shorten. We’ll be following suit with nature and turning our attention to transitions in asana practice next month. In this, the last week of summer, we thought…

As we start to wrap up our month of “teaching tips,” I’d like to share a bit of my journey as a teacher and how I found my way to teaching in the 216 style. My Teaching Journey Before I started teaching, most yoga poses were second nature to me, having grown up as a…

Choose your teaching words with care As a yoga student (especially beginner yoga student) the toughest part of asana practice is listening; actually being able to hear the sentence the teacher spoke, and without looking all over the room, take those words and translate them into a movement with one’s body. When your students are…

How do you structure your asana classes? Is there a “right” way to structure a class? You’ve probably heard the statement “Yoga is for everyone…” This statement holds true, because yes, there are many types of yoga; BUT, within one type of yoga there tends to be different styles of relaying that SAME information! Let’s…

Take a look at the nearest door. It’s a rather simple mechanism: a large piece of material attached to a frame via hinges! Like a door, (only slightly more complicated) each of our joints is the meeting place of two or more bones attached via ligaments and tendons allowing for movement. Take a look at…

In Yoga 216 INfrastructure, we take gravity seriously. Gravity brings weight to an action Take a look at ardha uttanasana (half forward fold), adho mukha svanasna (downward facing dog), and navasana (boat pose); three distinctly different poses, yet when we break them down into joint actions they are essentially the same. All three poses, at a basic…

Do you know what it’s like to feel your knees buckle underneath you? One minute you’re standing on straight legs, the next you’re collapsing under your own weight. It’s like someone just took your knees away. What if I told you that many of us experience some degree of knee collapse every day? Specifically what’s called knee…

In Yoga 216 INfrastructure, we talk about valves all the time. What’s a Valve? Valve (n): Any device for halting or controlling the flow of a liquid, gas, or other material through a passage, pipe, inlet, outlet, etc. The term valve comes from Gary Kraftstow’s work with yoga and yoga therapy. It is a term used to identify “misalignments” in the physical body that prohibit the flow of energy within a shape and therefore, its…

In Yoga 216 INfrastructure, we talk about muscles a bunch. And not all aspect of muscle fundamentals, but primarily the fundamental principle of how they create movement. Ready for it? How Muscles Create Movement Bones don’t move themselves. Muscles contract and move the bones. That might seem obvious, but often the obvious passes by unnoticed,…

In Yoga 216 INfrastructure, we look at asana through a lens of joint range of motion for each joint action. Let’s unpack that. First, what’s a joint? A joint is the meeting of two bones: In movement studies, we’re usually talking about synovial joints. A synovial joint is a freely-movable joint. Synovial fluid lubricates the…